KAT-7 Telescope

About KAT-7 Telescope

The KAT-7 (Karoo Array Telescope-7) is a seven-dish radio telescope array located in the Meerkat National Park, approximately 85 kilometres northwest of Carnarvon in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Constructed by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), the array was completed in 2011 and fully commissioned in 2012. It was built primarily as an engineering testbed and precursor for the larger 64-dish MeerKAT array and the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. KAT-7 is the first radio telescope array in the world to feature dishes constructed entirely from composite fibreglass materials. The seven dishes, each 12 metres in diameter, are arranged within a compact 200-metre footprint. This layout optimizes the array for mapping low surface-brightness radio sources and large-scale cosmic structures. The facility utilizes South African-designed Reconfigurable Open Architecture Computing Hardware (ROACH) correlators for data processing and a Stirling pump cryogenic system to cool its receivers to 75 Kelvin. While initially intended for technical verification, KAT-7 has been utilized for scientific observations, including mapping galactic hydrogen gas, monitoring pulsars, and participating in global Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) networks. Due to its location inside a strictly regulated Radio Quiet Zone designed to prevent signal interference, the physical site is closed to casual public visitors.